In the Southwest Netherlands region, 67 percent of all patients admitted were not, 18 percent had been vaccinated once and 15 percent had been fully vaccinated against the corona virus. A person does not count as fully vaccinated in this count until two weeks after the second dose. There are a few vaccinated patients in the intensive care units in this region, who often also suffer from other conditions or whose immune system is not working properly.
In Brabant, 5 percent of patients are fully vaccinated. ‘We do not have exact figures about patients with a single shot, but it is certain that the majority have not been vaccinated,’ says a spokesperson. The UMCG in Groningen, which asks corona patients whether they have been vaccinated, cannot yet say how many of them have been vaccinated. The Sint Antonius hospital in Utrecht does not yet have exact numbers available, but sees that roughly one in five patients has or has not been fully vaccinated. Half of them have other health problems, the remaining 10 percent have ‘really got sick despite the vaccination’, says spokesman Roeland Franck. ‘We now have nine corona patients at home, two of whom have been vaccinated. So that’s in line with the trend in recent days.’
Few numbers
It is striking how little is known about the number of vaccinated persons in hospitals. Most hospitals and care networks (regional partnerships between hospitals and other acute care providers) cannot tell what proportion of patients this concerns. RIVM does not yet have these figures either, says RIVM epidemiologist Susan van den Hof. ‘We want to map this as soon as possible, but we are bound by the privacy rules.’ The hospital data cannot therefore simply be linked to the vaccination data. Most Dutch people (93 percent) have given permission to share their data with the RIVM when vaccinating.
This small sample paints the picture that vaccinated people can indeed become seriously ill, but that the chance is much smaller than for unvaccinated people. Almost half of the adult Dutch population is fully vaccinated, and they account for only a small proportion of hospital admissions.
Vaccination rate
According to Van den Hof, it is no surprise that there are vaccinated people in hospital. “It matches the picture in those who test positive: 9 percent of them are also fully vaccinated.” In addition, vaccination coverage is highest among the elderly, where the risk of serious symptoms is much higher than among the young. ‘As the vaccination coverage increases, the percentage of vaccinated patients among hospital patients will also increase. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce the total number of shots’.
Ernst Kuipers of the LCPS is not surprised by the figures either. According to him, this percentage is in line with expectations, given the vaccination coverage and the effectiveness of the vaccines as shown by previous studies. The LCPS wants a national picture of the percentage of vaccinated patients among hospital patients quickly, because this data is needed to be able to accurately predict hospital occupancy.
With the cooperation of Anke van den Broek
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